


Call Down The Hawk

by garfunkelandgoats



Series: Matilda + Emory verse [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, Trauma, ambiguous reality, kind of a character study of everyone involved, tabris died killing the archdemon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 19:41:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16625234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garfunkelandgoats/pseuds/garfunkelandgoats
Summary: After Hawke is left in the Fade, Varric and Alistair find some common ground in the stories they've been left with.





	Call Down The Hawk

**Call Down the Hawk: Chapter One**

  
  
  
  
  


_ Call down the hawk from the air --- _

_ Let him be hooded or caged _

_ Till the yellow eye has grown mild. _

_ For larder and spit are bare, _

_ The old cook enraged,  _

_ The scullion gone wild. _

 

_ I will not be clapped in a hood, _

_ Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, _

_ Now I have learnt to be proud _

_ Hovering over the wood _

_ In the broken mist _

_ Or tumbling cloud. _

 

_ What tumbling cloud did you cleave, _

_ Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, _

_ Last evening, that I, who had sat _

_ Dumbfounded before a knave _

_ Should give to my friend _

_ A pretense of wit? _

_ \---”The Hawk” by William Butler Yeats _

 

* * *

  
  
  
  


9:41 - Skyhold

  
  
  


“To Hawke,” said Varric, raising his flagon of ale with a pained grimace he tried to pass off as a smirk. 

 

“Hawke” said Alistair, looking for all the world like a scolded child. Varric doesn’t know him well, never saw how he was with Hawke--and that stings, doesn’t it, for the storyteller not to know--but he sees something of his dearest friend in the Warden. Like the familiarity of cousins rather than brothers, siblings rather than twins, there are traces of Hawke in Alistair’s humor, although the core of it is different. 

 

Hawke was larger than life when he wanted to be, learned to play the part. Varric knew him before he became the Champion, he knew to tell the difference, and there was one--whether it be Hawke growing more comfortable in his found family, in his role, or entirely an act, Varric did not know, but there was a change.

 

Alistair, from what he could tell, was another story. His seemed more coping mechanism than show, self deprecation rather than feigned ego. Varric liked him. Alistair seemed a good man, which almost made it worse. There was an ugly part of Varric that wished he could hate him, that wished this good man had died in place of his friend. It’s selfish, he knows it, but the thought is there.

 

He downs the rest of his ale, letting out a heavy sigh. Someone will have to tell Fenris.

 

“I know that look,” Alistair chuckles without a trace of humor behind it, and Varric isn’t sure he sees him.

 

“That so, Freckles?” He doesn’t look him in the eye, instead gently swirling the last drops at the bottom of his cup. “Care to share with the class?”

 

He isn’t much in the mood for conversation, as it turns out; after all, the one person he wants to talk about this kind of thing to is Hawke and, well--

 

Varric’s no stranger to losing friends. Family, either. But Hawke, well. Hawke’s different. As silly a notion as it is, a part of him always thought Hawke would outlive them all. Outlive the Maker. He never thought he’d be…

 

Not this soon, anyways. Varric felt a sick twist in his stomach. 

 

“When Ma--sorry--when the Hero of Ferelden--” Alistair sighs, visibly pained. “It was the loneliest feeling in the world, um, just watching everyone else go about their lives. It felt like….like nobody else cared that she was gone, and it wasn’t true, but there were all these big celebrations because the Blight was over and Anora was queen and just--”

 

He catches himself, nearly losing his breath as the words come tumbling out, and as Varric watches the Warden gather himself together--frightened, lost--he remembers just how young Alistair and Warden Tabris were during the Blight.

 

“You knew Hawke a lot longer than I knew  _ her _ , so that’s--I’m sorry. It was a long time ago and I shouldn’t--I don’t mean to--”

 

“It’s okay, Freckles.” Varric says carefully. They sit in silence for a while, the tavern continuing to bustle around them. It’s his fault, he thinks. He dragged Hawke into this. If he’d just left well enough alone--

 

_ “Once again Hawke is in danger because of you, Varric. You found the red lyrium. You brought him here…” _

 

“It should have been me.” That stops him. “Varric, you should know--there was a choice. It was him or me and we both volunteered but I didn’t--”

 

He feels like he could throw up.

 

“I should have insisted, I don’t know why he--”

 

Varric agrees with him and hates himself for it. It should’ve been anybody else, and he knows what a piece of shit he is for thinking that, knows that everyone else there had people who care about them just as much as Hawke did but damn it, why did it have to be  _ him _ ?

 

That can’t have been it, there should’ve been something more, but now all that’s left of his best friend in the word is that Maker-damned book. It frustrates him to no end that he can’t recall what it was that Hawke last said to him. Everything that happened in the Fade was unreal and what he does remember is fragmented, confused. Hawke was afraid, he remembers, more visibly afraid than he’d seen him in a long time--he stayed close, keeping his distance from the Inquisitor and Alistair, gravitating towards Varric from the moment they woke up in that place. He was quiet, hardly said a damn thing the whole time.

 

_ “Do you think it mattered, Hawke? Do you think anything you did ever mattered?” _

 

_ Varric turns his head to see Emory, stiff, gripping his staff with white knuckles. _

 

_ “Hawke--” he starts, frowning, not liking what he sees in his friend’s face. _

 

_ “You’re a failure and your family died knowing it. Fenris will, too, and it will be your fault.” _

 

_ There’s something wet in Hawke’s voice when he forces a grin--more a baring of teeth than anything. “Well, that’s going to grow tiresome quickly.” _

Hawke joking with him, strained, the way he threw his arm out to block Varric when the Nightmare descended--meeting his best friend’s eyes from the other side of a barrier and hardly recognizing him. Did he know then what he was going to do? Varric never saw him make the decision, didn’t even know there was one being made--they’d had their own problems to deal with on the other side, and then the next thing they’d known the Inquisitor was shouting to follow. He didn’t see him, he didn’t see--

 

 _“Where’s Hawke?”_ _He asked, already knowing the answer from the guilty twitch of the Inquisitor’s face, from the color draining from Alistair’s face. It was inevitable, wasn’t it, in the end?Men like Hawke end violently, that he’s always known, but he can’t be gone._

 

He should have seen it happen, he should know--what was Hawke thinking, what were his last words, did he die afraid and in pain and alone all because Varric didn’t think to notice?

 

In his head he sees the years go by, wonders what he missed, because that’s all that he’ll ever have of Hawke now that he’s gone--sees him stupid and drunk and laughing loudly at the Hanged Man, sees Hawke and Fenris looking at each other as if nobody else mattered, sees Hawke screaming, anguished, holding what remained of his mother in his arms--and wonders when he stopped knowing him. When Hawke became so far out of reach that he could do something like this, that he could kill himself for strangers like it was nothing.

 

Because that’s what this was, he thinks. A suicide.

 

Why didn’t Hawke let Alistair stay behind, why, damn it  _ why _ , when he had so many people who depended on him, who  _ loved _ him--the selfish son of a bitch had to have known what he was doing to them--

 

_ The Nightmare descends, a green shimmer separating the leaders from the rest of the party, and in the moment before he turns and fights, Varric yells for Hawke, sees him swallowed up by the enormity of the thing, sees the fear in his eyes harden into something else, his frown deepen, before he turns from Varric and-- _

 

He realizes then that Alistair has been rambling for a while now, sees before he hears the bitterness there-- _ ”Your whole life you’ve left everything to more capable hands. The Archdemon, the throne of Ferelden...who will you hide behind now?” _ \--and all at once he understands what it is to know a legend. A legend that he himself created. Tabris and Hawke became stories, became nothing, leaving the rest of them with the task of telling it. 

 

Varric doesn’t want to tell it. He just wants his friend back.

 

“Freckles,” he begins, even now slipping into his role of storyteller as easily as breathing. “Did Hawke ever tell you about the time…”

  
  


\--

 

Hawke screams, voice ragged with frustration and terror as he hurls a fireball at the Nightmare. Abomination. Huge fucking spider, whatever you call it. He’s exhausted, covered in filth and blood and drenched in sweat, and the only reason he didn’t give up and let the damned thing kill him as soon as the others were safe is because he’s too damn stubborn and too damn stupid. And so he keeps fighting, mentally begging for it to be over, scared out of his mind at the sheer size of the thing as it taunts him. 

 

Emory finds himself clinging to thoughts of the people he’s leaving behind, of Fenris, despite the gaping hole in his chest he feels at the knowledge he’ll never see any of them ever again.

 

“Fucking die!” He yells, half feral with desperation, and barely dodges one of its attacks.

 

There’s no way out, he’s going to die here, and he doesn’t want to, damn it it isn’t fair, he wants to see everyone again, he can’t stand not knowing--

 

_ “Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you.” _

 

He chokes back a sob, fighting the building nausea deep in his belly. Despair demons lunge at him even as he focuses on the Nightmare itself, wearing the faces of his family, his friends. 

 

There’s one that looks like Fenris, and he tries to keep out of its reach, knowing he  _ can’t-- _ it looks just like him, but all wrong, his lyrium tattoos are red and sickly and he’s just parroting back things the real Fenris has said to Hawke, his voice mixing with that of the Nightmare, perverted into something ugly, and Hawke is scared shitless.

 

He sees a flash of red, and before he can scream the lyrium ghost rushes him, he’s finished, the Nightmare is going in for the kill and he falls and hits his head hard and then the ground is rumbling, an inhuman scream tearing the air, like nothing he’s ever heard in his life.

 

The world spins as a large shadow falls over him--a dragon? Flemeth?  

 

“I don’t...I don’t wanna--” Emory’s eyes drag themselves shut, suddenly heavy, and he loses consciousness to the sound of screams.

 

_ It’s late, one of those long nights spent at the Hanged Man before his friends shuffle home in groups, and Hightown may be dangerous at night but Hawke doesn’t much care. _

 

_ His arm is around Fenris’ waist, solid and warm, and there’s a giddy heat creeping at his cheeks as he takes a swig from a bottle of wine. Fenris laughs, wicked, and grabs it before he can finish, downing the remains in one gulp. _

 

_ “Ah! You wound me, messer!” _

 

_ The elf grins and there’s an open softness to his eyes as he does it that makes something in Emory flip-flop. “Were I to hurt you, Hawke, you would know.” _

 

Hawke stirs, rolling onto his stomach and coughing up blood. The battle is still raging on behind him, between the Nightmare and--whatever the fuck that was. He crawls, the ground still shaking too hard to stand, as he looks for his staff.

 

_ Tallis grabs Hawke’s hand as soon as they’re free, pressing a finger urgently to her lips as she drags him after her and around a corner, nearly tripping over Varric in the process. Fenris steadies Hawke as he stumbles after her, eyes wide. His relief is palpable, checking for injuries before anyone else can get a word in. _

 

_ “There you are! Hawke, are you hurt? What happened?” _

 

_ Emory shakes his head, dazed. “I-I’m fine,” he breathes, feeling ill. They were going to make him Tranquil, he thinks, and his hand finds Fenris’ arm, thoughtlessly affectionate. _

_ Later, in the woods, Fenris falls into step with Hawke, letting the others pass them by. He doesn’t meet the mage’s eyes, words cautious in a way they haven’t been in a while. “You...frightened me,” he says, and Hawke feels something in him crumple, taking the elf’s hand in his own and giving it a reassuring squeeze. _

 

_ “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. The side of Fenris’ mouth curls up for a moment as he walks close, letting Hawke exist in his space comfortably. _

 

_ “Don’t do that again.”  _

 

He struggles to sit up, steadying himself with his staff, and watches dumbstruck as the Nightmare fights with an Archdemon. A bloody Archdemon. Naturally. The despair demons that lie slain around him linger in the forms of his friends a moment longer before dissipating. Emory doesn’t know when his life became so damn weird.

 

_ Hawke groans, disgusted, as he presses a cloth to his nose in an attempt to fight off the stink of shit and death.  _

 

_ “Maker’s bloody balls, Anders, if I knew it was going to be  _ this  _ bad I would’ve stayed home.” This time the mage doesn’t respond to his joking, instead frowning deeper as he walks stiffly ahead. Hawke frowns, confused, and looks back over his shoulder to find Fenris. _

 

_ The elf watches Anders, eyes narrowed in suspicion. _

 

_ “Something wrong?” He asks, slowing his walk. _

_ “I...do not know,” says Fenris, glancing around the sewer. He’s been on edge all afternoon, and Hawke has known him long enough to know better than to discount the elf’s perception. “Does the mage seem strange to you?” _

 

_ Hawke snorts. “You’ll have to be more specific. Half our friends are mages and the rest are strange as all hell.” _

 

_ “No stranger than you,” Fenris chuckles, and the tension dissipates. _

 

_ Anders clears his throat up ahead and Hawke rolls his eyes, earning a smirk from Fenris.  _

 

Hawke drags a hand down his face, retching onto the ground at the sound of the damned creature’s shrieking. The Nightmare comes crashing down, hitting the ground so hard he falls again, the world spinning again.

 

_ Nobody’s laughing when the Chantry explodes, the horror of it so unimaginably large as it destroys itself, bathing the awestruck onlookers in red light. Hawke, trembling uncontrollably, turns to stare at Anders. _

 

_ “What the  _ fuck _ have you done?” His voice wavers, betraying him, and Hawke feels weak in the knees as he grips at the front of Anders’ robes, frustrated and terrified by the serenity on the mages’ face. “Void take you, Anders, what the FUCK have you done?” _

 

_ “What I had to,” he replies, and Emory realizes then that he doesn’t know Anders, maybe he never has. _

 

_ “You--why would you--you used me, you son of a bitch.” More pleading than angry, he turns and sees the look on Meredith’s face. She’ll kill them all sooner than let this lie, he knows it, and feels the presence of the people he loves at his back. The urge is there, to turn himself in, to let the bastards do whatever they damn well please to him, so long as they let the others go, prevent this genocide. _

 

_ It’s what he deserves for his part in this, however unwitting. _

 

_ He’s about to say it and then Fenris-- _

 

Hawke is jolted awake, sitting up quickly to find a dagger to his throat. 

 

“Don’t move,  _ shem _ .” The accent is familiar, that he knows--Denerim, maybe? But Hawke doesn’t recognize the woman’s voice. 

 

“Way ahead of you, friend,” Hawke says, grimacing when he spots his staff too far away. “I’m a big fan of not-moving, myself, if you hadn’t noticed from the puddle of drool you found me in.”

 

“Shut up.” The dagger is gone but he knows better than to relax even as she slinks into view. A young elven woman, smaller but sturdier than the elves he knows, with rather dull red hair in a braid and dark brown eyes, heavily scarred. She might’ve been pretty once, he thinks briefly, before he notices the armor. She’s a warden.

 

_ Oh, shit. _

 

“You’re Tabris,” he says, disbelieving. “The Hero of Ferelden.”

 

She frowns, visibly confused “The what?”

 

“Shit, I really am dead.”


End file.
